Thursday, 13 December 2012

BENGHAZI AND
REPUBLICAN

DISLOYALTY AND TREACHERY

Benghazi. A set up by the Republicans. It was supposed to be a game
changer for the GOP. The Republican anti-Muslim video maker just happened to
release his video around about the time of the September 11 memorial solely for
the purpose of provoking and instigating outrage and murder in the Middle East
with the sole purpose of bringing President Obama’s international accomplishments
into disrepute. The outpouring of rage and violence in the Middle East was the
consequence of the video and what provoked the violence that provided the cover
for the assassination of the U.S. Ambassador in Libya. There is a direct link
with the video and the timing of the terrorist attack, and it was unfortunate
that the opportunity was created by the Republican video maker. It is therefore
shameful how the Republicans intend to make Susan Rice the scapegoat if she is
nominated by President Obama to be the next Secretary of State. First and
foremost, Susan Rice was acting on behalf of her boss, President Obama who gave
her the instructions and script to present to the Sunday shows on that fateful
day. Susan Rice was not presenting a personal position or opinion on what
happened in Benghazi but was made the official spokesperson by the Administration
on that issue. One small question I have is why was Hillary Clinton not the one
tasked with presenting this information on that Sunday on behalf of the Administration,
since she was the Secretary of State. It is unfortunate that the Obama Administration
was stampeded into hasty action and statements by the crass and unpatriotic
actions of Mitt Romney who immediately politicised the issue of Benghazi.It is obvious that Romney lacked the
qualities of a statesman. He proved himself to be the supreme political
opportunist where nothing was off limits. Even if it brought his own country
into disrepute in the international arena. His one overriding agenda was to
defeat Obama at the polls, and he was going to do this by any means necessary
even if his conduct was unpatriotic, disloyal and treacherous, if by so doing
he could impugn Obama's international standing on foreign policy issues.

It is therefore spiteful and mean-spirited in the extreme that the GOP
intends to crucify her for doing the job she was given as a public servant
under the authority and supervision of the President. The GOP needs to give it
up and desist with their continuing obstructionism and obfuscation, now that
the elections are over. Whatever they do can no longer hurt Obama. First, the presidential
election has come and gone, and President Obama has won a convincing and resounding
mandate for his second term in office. He is entitled to his team and the
puerile attempts of the GOP, principally in the form of Graham and McCain, to
constantly obstruct him serves no useful purpose for the GOP except to put them
in a bad light with the electorate. And they will have to answer for their
misconduct and misdemeanours at the next elections coming up in 2014. The GOP
should realise that no one is asleep any more. There will be no repeat of 2010,
because everyone is now paying attention. They should have read the writing on
the wall after the resounding electoral spanking of the GOP by the Democrats in
both the Senate and House of Representatives.

The problem is why the continuing hullabaloo over Benghazi by the GOP?
Obama is prone to falling into these sorts of traps set by the Republican extremists
who have essentially put him on the defensive since the GOP 2010 landslide congressional
election. Obama has never learnt the virtue of keeping silent until he has all
the facts. He tends to act spontaneously whenever he is criticised. And the GOP
has capitalised on this unfortunate trait. Essentially, Romney stampeded him
into sending Susan Rice to present the administration’s position on a matter of
national security before he could be fully briefed by his intelligence
apparatchiks. In another time and place, Romney would have been arrested, tried
and hanged for giving comfort to the enemy. You just do not pre-empt the President
with reckless statements about national security before the President has
received a full briefing from the appropriate intelligence and national
security agencies. Thereafter, it is the President’s duty to brief the public.
There was no justification for Mitt Romney's midnight attack, except to give
the enemy satisfaction of American disunity.

Within 24 hours of the al-Qaida attack on New York, did any sane
American come out and criticise George Bush for not taking action in spite of
the fact that he had been forewarned about the imminence of such an attack.
When Pearl Harbour was attacked, did any American come out within 24 hours to
criticise FDR for not heeding the warnings about the imminence of such an attack.
In this particular matter, there were no warnings of any kind, since no human
assets had infiltrated this terrorist cell that launched the murderous assault
on the Ambassador. Romney’s actions were totally despicable and he only got
away with it because nothing was off-limits by the Republicans against the
first brown President, even where it entailed treachery against the country and
giving comfort to its enemies. There were no failures at Benghazi. What needs
to be explained is why the Ambassador took an ill-advised trip to Benghazi,
without ensuring adequate security for himself. That was his own primary responsibility.
In this case, it is obvious that no amount of security would have saved the Ambassador
because he put himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The terrorists
were only biding their time and waiting for a perfect opportunity to launch
their assault and the Ambassador gave it to them. It did not have to be that
day, it could have been any other day. It was easy to make the mistake and
assume that the cause of the attack was the anti-Muslim video, but the truth of
the matter is that it was the cover the terrorists used, as it incensed all
Muslims including the Libyan authorities. Since a simultaneous attack was going
on in Cairo at that time, it was easy to assume that the events were related.
In fact, what should be investigated is not the Obama administration but Romney
and his Republican cohorts who imperilled their country’s national security by
their idiotic partisan actions. In presidential politics, one thing has always
been sacrosanct in the public arena that is the President’s prerogative on
national security. No one else has any right to make dangerous and reckless statements
on national security issues or by their actions imperil the country or give
comfort to its enemies.

However the assassination of the U.S. Ambassador in Libya brings into
focus an aspect of Obama’s policy that has troubled me deeply. Muammar Gaddafi
had become a reformed leader. He had given up his nuclear ambitions and had
been rehabilitated by the international community. What was the raison d’etre
of driving him from power and killing him? Muammar al-Gaddafi gave Libya a
measure of stability and economic development that it has lost since he was
driven from power and killed by American and British military might. We now see
shades of Somalia in Libya. Now Libya is in a state of “democratic” chaos
deeply divided along tribal lines, just like Somalia. These deep tribal
divisions that Gaddafi had been able to contain and hold in check have now been
let loose and anyone expecting Libya to become a democratic society any time
soon is just engaging in wishful thinking. The internecine strife will continue
indefinitely creating a new safe haven for al-Qaida terrorists and
sympathisers. The consequences of killing Muammar al-Gaddafi can already be
seen by the takeover of northern Mali by al-Qaida affiliated terrorists. In
fact, I predict that Libya will never become a democratic country. The concept
of democracy is anathema and an abomination to Muslim thinking and
philosophical thought. The only democracy in an Islamic society is the “democracy”
of the Shari'a. You cannot give human rights to Muslims when their religion
does not recognise the concept of human rights, and have devised barbaric
punishments for actions that are not deemed crimes in the West. These are the
mistakes that have been made by U.S. policy makers since George Bush decided he
needed to bring “democracy” to Iraq and liberate it from dictatorship. George Bush only succeeded in opening a
Pandora ’s Box, let the genie out of the bottle, creating Frankenstein states
that have a natural and innate dislike and hatred for the U.S. The result of
Bush’s policies was the creation of a less than friendly Shiite state culturally
and spiritually allied and subservient to its no. 1 enemy, Iran. Like the Shias
used Bush to remove Saddam Hussein and the Sunnis from power in Iraq, America
has now been used by the same Islamists to overthrow Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya.
Whatever you do for Muslims, never expect friendship or gratitude from them
because the first enemy of the Muslim is always and ultimately the Christian West
and that will never change because this is the fundamental principle and tenet
of the Quran and the Islamic faith, hatred of Christianity and Christians. It
is obvious that most Christians have never read the Koran or understand what it
stands for. They view Islam as innocuous, as if it guarantees freedom of
religion or the concept of separation of the mosque and state. It is impossible
to explain the naiveté of U.S. policy makers in relation to the dynamics of the
Islamic world. Otherwise the West would not
have been so quick to take action in Muslim countries for any side or whatever reason,
because the ultimate result is to create an anti-western political environment,
once the Islamists have achieved their goals with U.S. support. You can see
this in Afghanistan, where the so called Afghan allies of the Americans are now
responsible for more U.S. deaths and casualties than the Taliban or its allies.
America just stayed too long in Afghanistan. The war there should have been
limited to eliminating Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership as well as
the Taliban leadership that gave Osama bin Laden safe haven in Afghanistan.
This should have been done within 2 years, wherein U.S. troops should have
withdrawn and set up a military quarantine around Afghanistan, driven by drone
strikes and CIA led strategic support.

Bogging down the U.S. military for years in Afghanistan has served no
useful purpose except to provide cannon fodder and target practice for a
continuing Taliban insurgency. Afghanistan is now on the verge of collapse and
will ultimately revert back to the Taliban. So much for all the U.S. financial
and military efforts and the unnecessary loss of American life in this god
forsaken Islamic backwater. If Muslims want to stone themselves to death, cut
off their limbs, oppress and subjugate their women, deny basic rights except
those recognised by the Shari'a, why then should the U.S. be concerned for
Muslims when they are not concerned for themselves. They believe in the Quran
and the Shari'a, so they should be allowed to live according to its dictates.
Muslims who reject the Shari'a should be made to reject Islam and convert to
Christianity or any other religion that guarantees their rights. They cannot
insist on being Muslims and then continue to clamour for western freedoms and
liberties. Islam and western concepts are incompatible and diametrically
opposed to each other. And since the West has always believed in freedom of
religion, the West should allow Muslims to practice their religion, no matter
how harsh and draconian it may seem to the West. Maybe when they have cut off
all their hands and disabled all their people, they would lack the capacity to
launch holy wars and terrorist attacks.

And yet the U.S. has learnt nothing. Now they want to interfere in Syria
on the basis of human rights without understanding what makes that intervention
dangerous. Obama is being egged on by the warmongering and bellicose
Republicans who have a penchant for advocating wars that they never enlist to
fight in. Two draft dodgers, George Bush and Mitt Romney fit this mould. Bashar
al-Assad is engaged in a war for the very survival of his people, the Alawites.
Should the Sunnis win, there is going to be genocide, a systematic pogrom of
the Alawites by the Sunnis. Unlike Saudi Arabia, ironically America’s number
one ally in the Middle East, apart from Israel of course, one should not forget
that almost all the September 11 terrorists were Saudi citizens [all Sunnis],
yet Bush chose to attack Iraq instead in spite of the lack of evidence and
proof of Iraqi complicity in the September 11 attacks. The Alawites have
prevented Sunni radicalism from making Syria a hotbed for al-Qaida style Sunni terrorists.
If the Alawites are driven from power, Syria far from becoming a democratic
state would just become another hotbed of Sunni radicalism, irrational
opposition to any peace with Israel and anti-Americanism. It is incredible that
the U.S. cannot see this. Fortunately, Obama has been unable to act militarily
in Syria, in the same manner as he did in Libya, because the Russians, who
fully understand the danger to the whole of the Middle East, if the Sunnis
radicals were to come to power in Syria, have refused to allow the U.S. through
the U.N. to attack Syria on behalf of the Sunni rebels and insurgents. And
China and Russia should continue to oppose U.S.military intentions in Syria. America will be in danger if they allow
the Sunnis to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria. America needs to fully back Russia,
and assist in quashing the Sunni rebellion in Syria. Just like Libya, the
Syrian Sunnis will pretend that they fight for human rights, democracy etc. but
in the end, their goal is to use the West to oust Assad and the Alawites from power,
just like the got the West to remove Saddam
Hussein in Iraq and Gaddafi in Libya. Since the removal of Saddam, Iraq has
maintained a very lukewarm relationship with the U.S., while the Libyan thank
you to the U.S. for liberating them from Muammar al-Gaddafi was to allow the U.S.
Ambassador to be killed apparently by al-Qaida terrorists.

Ironically and ultimately, in international law, the protection of
foreign diplomatic personnel rests with the host government, and if the U.S.
Ambassador was killed the ultimate and final responsibility for his death
rested with the Libyan government, not with Obama or his administration. It is the
Libyans who are required to give an account as to why the Ambassador was not
adequately protected. So the question is why the Libyans did not provide
adequate security for the Ambassador, and not why the U.S. did not provide him
with adequate security, since Libya is not a province of the U.S. And the
answer is that the Libyan authorities were simply distracted by the video
disrespecting Islam, so inadvertently failed to perform their duties to the
U.S. Ambassador and his staff.

When you don’t learn from historical mistakes, the tendency is to repeat
them. America needs to inadvertently stop supporting Muslim radicalism and
extremism and advancing their cause because nothing, absolutely nothing the
U.S. does in the Middle East would give it any political capital or advantage
with its radicalised Sunni population. To most Muslim believers, the U.S. will
still remain an infidel state, the great Satan, to be ultimately defeated by
Islam. The delicate balance of power in the Middle East has been upset incessantly
by misguided American zeal to interfere in places that it understands
absolutely nothing about. The Chinese and the Russians oppose naïve and
dangerous American policies in the Middle East for good reason. The US believes
that democracy is a panacea for all the problems of the world. It is not. This
is the fallacy of trying to use a headache pill to cure cancer. Democracy does
not fit all. It is not one size fits all. For Muslims, the ultimate goal is the
imposition of Shari'a, because this is what their prophet told them to do. And Shari'a
is antithetical to democracy, to human rights, women’s rights, in fact to
everything that the West and western philosophical thought stands for. The U.S.
just allows radicalism and extremism to be introduced and installed
democratically. Once they win, that is the end of democracy. Remember Hitler’s
democratic assumption of power in 1933 ended democracy in Germany, and the
communist’s 1919 democratic assumption of power in Russia led to the one party
state. The democratic assumption of power by the Shiites in 1980 led to the
Iranian theocracy.Everywhere in the
Middle East and North Africa, we have seen radicalisation whenever the status
quo is tampered with. Americans should continue to ask why their Ambassador in
Libya was killed, when it was America’s so called help that freed the Libyans
from the “tyrannical” hand of Gaddafi. America will continue to be deceived
into helping its natural enemies who have concealed their true intentions under
the shibboleths of western philosophical thought, viz., democracy, human rights
etc.

It is quite disappointing the role Senator McCain has played in
undermining the President at every opportunity in the international arena.
While McCain appears to still be bitter about his loss to Obama in 2008, what
is observable is that he has seized on every international incident and crisis
to criticize Obama with the intention of stampeding him into hasty and
ill-advised political and/or military action. Currently, McCain is trying
everything he can to force Obama to intervene militarily in Syria, even though
that is not in America’s best interest. Suddenly, “oppressed” Muslims have
become the GOP and McCain’s number one priority. It is okay if Americans are
killing Muslims, but Bashar al-Assad should not kill Muslims who are trying to
overthrow his government in an internal rebellion. Since when did it become the
right of countries to interfere in the internal affairs of other states? If there
was a rebellion in the U.S., I assume that the U.S. federal government is just supposed to hand
over the country to the rebels. Then why must Assad be asked to hand over his
country to rebels? McCain’s parvanimity is breath taking. Having lost to the
first brown President, who has now been validated by his win over Romney,
McCain has done everything within his power to obstruct, oppose, and interfere
with Obama’s handling of foreign, national security and military policy.

McCain is not an honourable man. In a decent society, McCain would have
been quiet and held his peace so as not to be accused of shameless and
unjustified obstruction of the man who beat him fair and square. Obama has
earned the right to conduct the foreign policy and military strategy of the
U.S. as Commander-in-Chief. It is Obama that is Commander-in-Chief, not McCain,
and his views on these issues are completely irrelevant. The U.S. is struggling
to get out of Afghanistan, and McCain is hell-bent on dragging the U.S. into
the Syrian quagmire. Since when did McCain develop this love for the Sunni
Muslims of Syria that American lives must be expended to free them from their
legitimate government? In fact, it is in the best interests of the U.S. that Bashar
al-Assad continues as President. Just like Muammar al-Gaddafi, he is a rational
devil that the West knows who would be replaced by an irrational and rabidly
anti-American Iranian like form of government, if the Sunni insurgents
succeeded in overthrowing him. And every change of government in the Middle
East threatens Israel. It is not in Israel’s best interests that Bashar
al-Assad is overthrown. Just like it was not in Israel’s best interests that
Mubarak was overthrown. In fact, the Arab spring was not in Israel’s best
interests and the U.S. cannot inadvertently continue to further the interests
of radical Islam in the Middle East and North Africa. Islam recognises the
complete submission to the will of God, and complete submission to their
leaders ordained by God. In the Muslim world nothing happens by chance. Their
leaders are divinely ordained to rule. Radical Islam cannot and should not be
allowed to use western philosophical and political concepts to achieve radical
religious dictatorship in their countries. One of the best Muslims of all time,
Kemal Attaturk understood the dangers of Islam, and suppressed it as a
political and cultural force in his country. Unfortunately, radical Islam is
gradually creeping back into Turkey, and had it not been for the Turkish army
upholding the principles of Attaturk, the secular democratic state that he
created would have long since been overthrown and consigned to the garbage can
of history by Islamic radicals.

There is no doubt that Republicans have been using their fraudulently
obtained congressional majority in the 2010 elections to keep alive partisan non
issues like Benghazi, the General Petraeus extra marital affair, etc. on the
front burner, instead of addressing the serious economic issues confronting the
middle class of America, especially the advancing fiscal cliff. These
diversionary tactics seen useless, now that the presidential elections have
lost and won. Do they honestly believe that they can hurt President Obama, now
that the 2012 elections have become history and Obama has been validated for
all time? Does the legitimate rape Congress believe it can hold on to its
majority at the next midterm elections? What is wrong with these Republicans in
and out of Congress? Do they need a time machine? The Republicans have gone
nuts. They need to focus. Benghazi is not a matter for congressional
investigation. Mistakes were made but that is why we are human.It is within the purview of the State Department
to investigate and submit a report to Congress on Benghazi. It is on the basis
of that report that the Congress can then determine if the matter should be
pursued further. It is obvious that the main culprit for instigating a
premature partisan and irrational Republican congressional investigation was
Mitt Romney, aided and abetted by Fox News and certain members of the “liberal”
media that apparently secretly wanted Obama to loose.

Lastly, let me comment on the killing of U.S. citizens who are also
Islamic terrorists and sympathisers. Once again, it is convenient to criticise
Obama on this issue, in spite of the fact that criminals are killed every day by the police
for resisting arrest, escaping lawful custody and a whole range of other
reasons for the legitimate killing of a citizen. Safeguards have been put in
place to ensure the police do not abuse this power wherein they can engage in
senseless random and illegal killings. The killing of Islamic terrorists
outside the U.S. who are U.S. citizens is justified under the concept of wanted
dead or alive. Since the founding of the republic, wanted criminals can be
captured alive if that is possible, or be killed to apprehend them if it is
impossible to capture them alive. And this is the scenario when a terrorist
ensconces himself in a terrorist enclave out of reach of American law
enforcement. He can be killed wherever he is, if he cannot be physically apprehended
from the location in which he is hiding. So the killing of U.S. citizens who
are terrorists who cannot be apprehended alive is perfectly justified under the
wanted dead or alive concept. And since criminals are being killed every day
for a variety of reasons, it defies reason that terrorists should be exempted
from being killed, where they cannot be apprehended. My last word is that
McCain needs to bow his head in shame and spend the remainder of his life seeking
penance for his numerous irresponsible acts as a U.S. Senator.